Monday, September 30, 2013

New Mighty No. 9 Stretch Goal Revealed: Call Exclusive Stage & Boss

"Yes! We heard the feedback from our community, and at this level, we would be thrilled to fulfill this popular wish -- to add an all-new single-player level, including a boss fight, where you can play as Mighty No. 9’s heroine, Call!

We agree it would be a fun addition and a great way to mix up the action, so fingers crossed we can make it this far!"

Call's exclusive stage and boss clocks in at $3.7 million. The clock is ticking -- can we do it?!

I don't understand. Or at least I hope I don't. The way I'd like to read it is that this stretch goal will make Call's Single Player mode have a level unique to her. But the way it's actually worded seems like she'll be playable for this one stage. Like... Beck's going to get captured and the game will switch to Call for one level like Zero popping in during the intro level of X3.

If it's the latter? I really don't want it. I'd like to play as Call in single player. But, forced midgame character changing always gets on my nerves.

You have to understand that there is a ton of balancing (if you want a great playing experience) that comes along with using a totally different style character in stages that were designed for another.

The design team opted to have a single stage properly set for Call, rather than address the monumental task of re-balancing every level to work well with her.

@HSEXE: That's at least partially wrong. The co-op is a dedicated co-op challenge mode; not a drop in setup. And while the language around this Call level is sketchy? The "mix it up" line seems to me, to lend to it being a disruption.

@undamned: It's more work to do more of anything. That's a self-evident fact. But I don't think having a second player character for the full game is an unreasonable desire, nor a daunting task for the group assembled. Mega Man has a long history of utility powers and divergent character movesets. Moreover the degree of Call's divergence from Beck hasn't been established. We know that her skills will have unique elements from Beck's. But we don't know all her skills will be unique and incomparable. We don't know if her default weapon is different, and we don't know if her transformations are entirely her own. Though I suppose it's entirely possible Call runs through levels upside down on the ceiling, can only attack by reverse contact damage, and can't jump outside of a 5-way rush attack.

Capcom's business decisions aren't the issue. They've been bad, yeah, and they aren't heroes, but the way people have been acting towards the MM stuff still coming out has been beyond obnoxious. The board game has been a case in point; raked over the coals through no fault of their own, for daring to be displayed around the same time as M#9.I hardly think my money is going to make the difference, but the fandom has put a really bad taste n my mouth, so I choose to go donate. Maybe no one else feels the way I do, maybe some do. And so it goes,

If it were up to me, I would have put almost all the gameplay-related stuff before the console ports, because if a game sold well enough I'd probably put some of the money towards doing proper ports, but that's just me.

We still got the co-op mode challenges so I'm not considering it a big loss if we fail to hit 3.7 million (I could see hitting 3.3 or even 3.5 in the last 24 hours though).